Confessions of an Undercover Geek

Image and Sweatshirt from Cindy Li

Something that I don’t think most geeks realize is that we are pioneers. We read our blogs, use our rss, and download our podcasts. This behavior is not mainstream.

I have been meeting with some different groups about a variety of development projects. Sometimes they will look at me blankly when I mention subscribing to RSS feeds. I take for granted my geeky lifestyle and assume that everyone else is exactly the same way.

We can’t forget that we are here to serve our users.

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I subscribe to the 37Signals Job Board RSS because I am trying to figure out what I want to do for a job after college. I was looking through an opening in my RSS reader and found this entry for a Rails and UI Developer at Participatory Culture Foundation. I was like NICE. It sounds like a cool job. I then read the last sentence.

Care about doing good? Write us.

I think my fourth grade teacher ingrained something into my brain which makes the improper usage of good scream in my brain. It should be “Care about doing well?” or “Care about doing good work?”.

I am sure if you looked through my blog entries you could find plenty of candidates for bad grammar but this is a job description.

One thing I have noticed A LOT is that geeks do not know how to write or communicate well. This example of bad grammar is just the tipping point of what I have seen. What can we do to fix this problem?

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I have never actually played World of Warcraft. I have too many friends who start playing at 9pm and 12 hours later finally move away from the computer. I don’t have time to get into a game that will consume my life.

I found this World of Warcraft Easter Egg on BoingBoing. It is pretty sweet.

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I really wish I could attend the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2006 in las Vegas. Every company that is anyone in the web and computers will be there to celebrate and show off what they have been working on.

I unfortunately can’t make it to CES. The great thing about the web is that I can attend this trade show, without actually physically being there. I am calling all attendees to use the web to tell the story of what they see. Use Flickr to store photos and tag them with CES and CES2006. Put technorati tags on your blog posts.

If your going to be at CES and blogging from the event, drop me a note in my comments. I’ll be sure to add you to my rss reader. Is there a good place to find podcasts of some of the talks and keynotes?

I have been hearing a lot about the CES 2006 in Las Vegas. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrect from Diggnation are going to be there. The TWIT guys are talking about it and some will be there. Major Nelson is going to be there. Robert Scoble is going to be there and Venkat Narayanan is excited to see what Bill Gate’s is going to say in his keynote. It is summit of all things geeky.

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The Chief TWIT and host of the “This Week in Tech” Podcast Leo Laporte has asked his community of listeners to chime in with the future direction of all of the TWIT podcasts (Security Now, Inside the Net, Triangulation.) Leo wants to know if they should start a subscription or ad-based business model. If they want to continue with further programming development, they need to bring in more revenue.

I am cool with them putting some ads in their show. I really like the way that Patrick Norton and Robert Herron do it on Digital Life TV. They do 10-15 minute segments followed by some commercials. It just makes it more like normal television for me.

I’d love there to be some type of technology programming network. There would be no one to do it better then Leo Laporte.

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I found the best piece of geek furniture. Grand idea studio made the Hard Drive Coffee Table.

The Hard Drive Coffee Table is built from an original 26″ diameter hard drive platter from an early storage device, the Control Data Corporation 6603 Disk File Controller manufactured by Bryant-Excello circa 1967

How awesome would that be in my apartment? I wonder if you could find people trying to get rid of those old hard drives and you could make your own table.

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Segway’s look like they are fun.

I found this great video of some guys in San Francisco playing Segway Polo. Enjoy!

(via Digg.com)

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I want a Segway Human Transporter. Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas…I wish. They are about $4000.

On the podcast This Week In Tech (TWIT), I heard the awesomest thing ever. Apparently there are a bunch of people in the San Francisco Bay Area that play Segway Polo. How sweet is that!

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Gaming Horizon in a story today reports that Blizzard Entertainment has gotten more then 5 million subscribers for the massive multiplayer role playing game World of Warcraft.

Oh wow! I can’t believe that 5 million people have drunk the World of Warcraft Kool Aid. This must be a sign of the second coming of Christ. :-p I have heard it’s really fun though and addicting.

A lot of my friends at RIT would like me to try it. It does work on Mac OS X. Most of those friends are addicted. There away messages read, “WoW Time.” They will miss 3 days of class because they have to get up to a certain level or are late to go see a movie because they had to win a big battle.

I love games, epsecially ones online, but when they start to interrupt your real life that’s messed up. More power to the guys at Blizzard Entertainment, the software makers, for being able to make a game that has had such wide adoption and acceptance. I am sure they are laughing their way to the bank.

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